About five times a year in Student Government, students request the allocation of the school’s money to purchase objects and create initiatives designed to enrich the community in a program called Participatory Budgeting (PB). Through PB, students have proposed a punching bag for the weight room, a foosball table for the fourth-floor hallway, and other objects for which they identified a need. 

Recently, students have deviated from fulfilling the goal of PB by proposing charities to which the student body should donate with student government money instead of using it to enrich the Parker community. Not only does donating the money defeat the purpose of PB, but it also opens a dangerous can of worms.

What will PB look like in a year? Will it just be a choice between charities? We already have a program, Berkowitz Committee, where students choose between Chicagoland charities. If these charity proposals continue, a student who actually wants to use the money to improve the Parker community will be unable to. 

Yes, the administration has required students to fundraise a portion of the money they plan on donating, but if students actually feel passionate about donating to charity, they’d raise all of the money themselves or start a club to do so. Why should Parker parents foot the bill for a donation that won’t actually improve the Parker experiences of their children? What if they don’t support every organization to which the students are allocating their money? 

But wouldn’t the money be better off going to charity instead of funding a foosball table? Yes, absolutely, but let’s apply that logic to another situation. 

Parker pays for the Homecoming Dance. Obviously, that money would be better off going to charity, but Parker is using the money to enrich the student body. Wouldn’t that money be better off going to Greenpeace? 

Prom? Wouldn’t that money be better off going to the American Red Cross? Chairs in the fourth-floor hallway? Wouldn’t that money be better off going to Doctors Without Borders? Indubitably, but all of these objects and programs benefit the student body. Parker’s student government money should go to the students and not outside organizations.

If students were allowed to donate to charities via student government money, why couldn’t clubs like Tampon Tuesday or CRM request money from student government? Instead of putting in the work to raise money themselves, asking for it through PB is far easier. What, then, is the limit of how many clubs can demand money, and how much? With more than one hundred clubs in the Upper School, Student Government cannot afford to subsidize them all, and who can choose with clubs receive a donation? If they can just ask for the money, what is the incentive for passionate students to fundraise themselves?

Positioning a charity donation next to an object beneficial for the student body places the student voter in a complicated place. Students feel as though they have an obligation to vote for the charity, as they feel guilty and selfish if they choose to vote for anything else. 

Furthermore, if we can’t select a charity that represents the views of every Parker student, we shouldn’t be giving it to charity at all. And why aren’t the proponents of turning PB in a charity selection program fighting to bring back civic engagement?

So let’s stop calling this push for turning PB into a charity-selection program noble and simply see it for what it truly is: typical teenage laziness.